Africa's al-Qaida specter

Threats migrate from Afghanistan to Mali and beyond

January 20, 2013

"War," the 19th century humorist Ambrose Bierce allegedly said, "is God's way of teaching Americans geography." It's safe to say that until very recently, most of us couldn't have found Mali on a map — if, that is, we even knew there was such a country. But when the French government launched air strikes and sent ground troops into the West African nation, Mali suddenly demanded our collective attention.

Why should Americans care what happens there? Not because the United States is about to dispatch air or ground forces to help our ally. Not because it implicates any of our many military alliances or threatens one of our longtime partners. But because seemingly unimportant events in obscure, faraway lands can eventually lead to dire consequences — even for the world's only superpower.

We all learned that on Sept. 11, 2001, when a radical Islamist group harbored by the Afghan government crashed planes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people. Soon we were at war in Afghanistan — and we still are.

We drove al-Qaida largely out of that country and, over time, killed many of its leaders — including, in 2011, Osama bin Laden. But in doing so, we forced the terrorist organization to scatter, decentralize and find new confederates, in places from Pakistan to Yemen to Somalia.

During the 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama said al-Qaida was "on its heels." Lately, however, it has found more footholds outside its customary haunts in South Asia.

Africa may be the most important. "Over the past 10 months, jihadist forces have re-established the rule of Islamic law across northern Mali," writes journalist Peter Chilson on the website of Foreign Policy. "Northern Mali is currently the largest al-Qaida-controlled space in the world, an area a little larger than France itself." United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon fears it will become a "permanent haven for terrorists."

In response to France's offensive, Islamic militants attacked foreign-owned natural gas facilities in neighboring Algeria. A Saturday assault by the Algerian army ended the siege but brought the death toll during the three-day crisis to about two dozen hostages. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the original attack was "an al-Qaida operation." A group affiliated with al-Qaida also took part in the September attack on the U.S. consular office in Benghazi, Libya.

The French fear that, left unchecked, these extremists could create a threat to other African countries and even France. That may be overstated: Not all groups claiming the al-Qaida imprimatur have global ambitions. Nor are such ambitions necessarily plausible. But as the memory of 9/11 instructs, it's best to err on the side of vigilance.

So the Obama administration has good reason to offer help to the French, through such possible options as intelligence, refueling and air transport. The threat at this point is far from sufficient to justify direct U.S. military involvement. But it's clear that Mali is no longer a place Americans can ignore.